Westport shares fall on lower revenue forecast

Oct 30 (Reuters) - Shares of Westport Innovations Inc fell as much as 18 percent after the engine developer cut its expectation for revenue growth to about 30 percent for the year from 50 percent.

Westport, a developer of technology that allows truck and bus engines to run on natural gas, said customers were sharply reducing inventory and delaying decisions to complete orders due to a lack of fueling infrastructure.

“The 30 percent number is a meaningless number ... what they are not saying is that the second half of the year will actually be negative growth,” analyst Jason Zandberg of PI Financial Corp said.

“Their business is going to contract and that is why you are seeing a drop in the stock price.”

Westport shares fell to a low of C$23.31 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock was one of the top percentage losers on the exchange.

“Their topline has been growing but the bottomline has been atrocious but now that they have stated that their topline is also contracting, if you combine that with their lack of discipline and spending, you would expect to see pretty large losses,” Zandberg said.

The company has posted a loss in the first two quarters of this year.

Westport, which has contracts with General Motors Co, Caterpillar Inc, Cummins Inc and Ford Motor , now expects full-year revenue of $340 million to $350 million.

The Vancouver-based company had earlier forecast revenue between $400 million and $425 million.

Jefferies & Co cut its price target on the company’s U.S.-listed shares to $45 from $55. (Reporting by Shounak Dasgupta and Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)